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Sunshine and magic window

OK, no clouds or grumbling today. Just fun.

First, some fun announcements.

The BCCB has given WINTERGIRLS its 5th starred review!! Thank you, BCCB!

The audio version of WINTERGIRLS has won an Audiofiles Earphones Award. (I wonder if it comes with a statue of giant earphones…) I had a very nice note from the narrator, Jeannie Stith over the weekend. I got to, erm, voice my opinion about the auditions and I thought she nailed Lia’s voice. I am so excited about the job Brilliance has done with this. Audiofile magazine agreed. Their review says “Stith takes listeners deep into Lia’s dark and frightening fight for survival.”

I’m not running to raise money for the Leukemia Society this year, sadly. I am so snowed under with work, I’m hardly running at all. (My goal to run 750 miles this year had to be tossed out. But I’m not grumbling. No clouds.)

However, the indefatigable and ever-organized Julia Maguire is running a marathon to raise $5,000 to find a cure for blood cancer. Julia works at Simon & Schuster and has always been an enormous help to me. If you liked CHAINS, please donate to Julia’s run, because there is no way the book would have been published on time without her. Go Julia!

And now….. the magic window.

Backstory: It is getting harder and harder for me to find a quiet place to write. My office up in the loft in busy and crowded with “author” stuff: outreach to readers, research, correspondence, etc. In the last two years, I’ve taken several mini-sabbaticals in hotels where I basically lock myself in and crank words. I have enjoyed these respites enormously, but it’s expensive.

Back in October, my Beloved Husband suggested that he make me a writing cottage in our Forest. I resisted the notion and found lots of reasons why I shouldn’t do it, but he was right. I need my own version of Walden Pond. Thoreau built his cabin himself. I don’t need to because I am married to a carpenter.

We’re in early days yet, but the plan is for “The Cottage” to be off the grid (solar power) and heated with a woodstove. We’re also trying to use as much recycled and sustainable materials as possible. To that end, we went to a salvage yard on Saturday to see what old building elements we could reuse.

We found a magic window.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic It is around 125 years old and came from a church.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Loading it up and carting it home was a little nerve-wracking for me, but BH had it under control.

Obviously, it needs a little work. No, a lot of work. BH and a buddy of his are starting on the rehab of the wood. Once that’s done, they’ll bring in a glass guy. The window is ten feet wide and eleven feet tall and will take up nearly an entire wall of the cottage, if everything works out. I’ll be posting about the construction project as it happens. Right now we’re waiting for the snow to melt.

And now this blog entry is already too long. Writing questions tomorrow, I swear!

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Not the best weekend ever – computer crashes and porn hacking

There were a couple of wonderful things that happened this weekend. I keep trying to remember that. The taxes are almost done and I started taming the file cabinets. We played a marathon game of Planet Earth Monopoly with Number One Son and his girlfriend, who shall now be named The Real Estate Mogul because she trounced us.

And we had an adventure Saturday morning that wound up with the purchase of a magic window. Which I will show you tomorrow.

But two very frustrating, irritating, enraging things happened.

The hard drive on my two-month old MacBook Air died Saturday. Completely died. I’m thinking it was a massive stroke. There was no way to recover any data or email. Most of it was backed-up, but I’m sure some things will slip through the cracks. If you are waiting to hear from me about something and I don’t respond by the end of this week, please mail me again.

Apple is replacing the drive without any problem. But I lost a day of work and will lose more time getting the replacement.

The second thing was worse. A pathetic loser hacked into the UNOFFICIAL LHA fan page on FaceBook and emailed all the members a link that took them to a porn site.

I would like to see that person flogged, but the police say I’ll have to settle for less.

The page that was hacked had no connection to me. It started by a high school student a couple of years ago. She has since left the group and don’t think anyone else stepped in to be the admin, hence the problems. A member of the group emailed me about the hacking and and I contacted FaceBook. I think they may shut the page down.

FOR THE RECORD….. There are 3 “official and approved” LHA pages on FaceBook:

1. My personal page; open to family, friends, and readers of my books. Send a request and I’ll friend you. URL: http://www.facebook.com/people/Laurie-Halse-Anderson/571139598.

2. An official”fan” page, for people who care only about my books and are a little sick of hearing me talk about snow and tomatoes. The URL for that is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Laurie-Halse-Anderson/21437339487.

3. The official Wintergirls page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wintergirls/47142907401.

These pages, as well as my presence on LiveJournal and MySpace and Twitter are all monitored; you’re as safe as a person can be on the Internet if you stick to the monitored sites.

I apologize to everyone who received the email from the skanky creep. I am very sorry and angry someone highjacked my name. I would love to meet up with that person and express my discontent face-to-face, but that’s what my lawyers are for.

SO! That was my weekend. How was yours?

I promise a return to unabashed perkiness tomorrow. I am very stoked about the magic window and can’t wait to show you pictures.

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Love from USA Today and a Skype visit with readers

USA Today gave an early shout-out to WINTERGIRLS and the 10th anniversary edition of SPEAK in the Book Buzz column yesterday!!! (There was dancing in the Forest.)

Once the excitement about that died down, it was time for the First Grand Experiment With an Online School Visit. Through the miracle that is Skype, I sat at my desk and talked to a class of 7th graders who live hundreds of miles away. Because both of our computers have cameras, we could see as well as hear each other.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic This is what the visit looked like at my end.

Their teacher, Kate Messner, is a friend and a fellow author. This was all her idea in the first place, so thank you, Kate! She and I tested the connection over the weekend, and then first thing in the morning yesterday, before the actual event.

You can read a detailed explanation of how the visit went (complete with more photos) on Kate’s blog.

How did it go from my POV? Excellent. It took about an hour of my time. I didn’t have to travel and sleep in a hotel. I really enjoyed being able to see the faces of each reader. I was able to hear their questions and enjoy interacting with them. I also got to be a little bit of a ham, knowing that my face was about 10 feet tall on the projection screen.

There were a few glitches. We lost the connection several times and had to reboot (or reconnect or reskype – we need a new verb for this) which was a wee bit frustrating, but not that bad. The quality of the video was not what you’d imagine, going by the visual quality portrayed in the ads on TV. Both of those problems could be a result of my location way out in the boondocks. We frequently have pixelation issues and limited bandwidth. We’ve had the technicians from Time Warner out here countless times and they have a different explanation every time.

I have another test Skype visit next month, with a group of teachers from the American School in Warsaw, Poland. (Yes, it’s the one I visited a couple of years ago.)

I am thinking of offering Skype visits to book clubs after this Spring’s tour and to classrooms starting in the fall. If you are a bookstore or book club interested in something this spring or summer, email me at laurie AT writerlady DOT com. If you are interested in a classroom visit, watch this space in September. I’ll make an announcement when I have it all figured out.

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Finding order in chaos

Spent all day yesterday sorting through receipts. Things are fairly under control. Now I have to total things up and prepare the package to send to my accountant.

This is something that few of us think about when we dream of becoming a writer. If the stars do line up and you are making a living from your books, you need to transform yourself into equal parts creative person and businessperson. I’m self-employed, just like many hairdressers, carpenters, graphic artists, and musicians. It’s not a bad thing, not at all. I like being in charge of myself. I get to boss me all over the place some days.

I do wish that I could boss these receipts into marching into the proper piles on their own.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic My desk, looking MUCH better than yesterday.

There are bunch of new things happening here in the Forest. I’ll be blogging about them tomorrow, I promise.

Meanwhile, check out this article about getting adults to read YA literature.

You can also read a fun interview with me done for the teens of Palatine, IL.